Consequentialism is a compass, not a judge

post by Neil (neil-warren) · 2024-04-13T10:47:44.980Z · LW · GW · 6 comments

Contents

  The compass and the judge
  Takeaways
None
6 comments

Tl;dr: Consequentialism works as a compass for your actions, not as a judge of moral character.

The compass and the judge

A woman steps onto a crowded bus, trips on a sitting man's outstretched foot, and breaks her arm. The Everett branches split: in one world, the man looks down and laughs evilly; in the other, he wakes up with a jerk, looks down, gasps, and apologizes profusely for leaving his foot in the alleyway as he slept. 

There’s clearly a difference between both men. Even when the consequence of their action was the same—breaking someone’s arm—their intention changes the moral calculation dramatically. If I had to hang around one of these men, I'd prefer the latter.^[1]

This intuition pump makes that obvious enough. But then people (as in "people I've met") will think of the thought experiment and recoil at the prospect of consequentialism; they think consequentialism condemns both men equally. But this misunderstands what consequentialism is for. It’s not supposed to judge how evil people are when they trip women. If you try inserting an event like this one into the consequentialist calculation machine, it will spit, sputter, and cough out a cloud of black smoke. Consequentialism is a compass; it points to [what it thinks is] the optimal moral direction.^[2] The compass might tell you that you should remember to tuck your feet in on a crowded bus, because that'll reduce the probability of negative consequences. It won't tell you how moral someone who forgot to do this is. ^[3]

The consequences of someone's actions are nonetheless partial evidence of their morality. If you discover that embezzled funds have been building up on Bob's bank account, that's evidence Bob is an unethical guy—most people who embezzle funds are unethical. But then you might discover that, before he was caught and the money confiscated, Bob was embezzling funds to build an orphanage. The consequences haven't changed, but Bob's final (unresolved) intentions are attenuating circumstances. If I had to hang around with either your typical fund-embezzler or Bob, I would pick Bob. 

Takeaways

There's an asymmetry in ethics, where you judge your own decisions based on criteria you don't hold other people to. I'll just quote HPMoR: 

The boy didn't blink. "You could call it heroic responsibility, maybe," Harry Potter said. "Not like the usual sort. It means that whatever happens, no matter what, it's always your fault. Even if you tell Professor McGonagall, she's not responsible for what happens, you are. Following the school rules isn't an excuse, someone else being in charge isn't an excuse, even trying your best isn't an excuse. There just aren't any excuses, you've got to get the job done no matter what."

Chapter 75

Here Harry is placing all the responsibility mass onto his shoulders. It's the natural conclusion of the compass/judge distinction: you're morally responsible for the future, and can judge yourself  at any given moment based on whether you take the optimal path; but you don't judge others like that. Harry's system of ethics isn't merely asymmetric; it's as asymmetric as can be. 

Mental-health wise, that might seem dangerous at first glance ("all the responsibility??"). I don't think it's dangerous at all, if you do it right: the same courtesy you extend to others by not judging them on consequentialist grounds, you must extend to your past self. So you needn't blame yourself endlessly for past mistakes—instead, you should look toward the future and salvage what you can.^[4] [5]

Thanks to Justis Mills for feedback on this post :)

1. ^{^}

   "Would I hang around with them" is a good heuristic for gut-level morality. 

2. ^{^}

   Actually, it doesn't even dare assert what the moral direction is. It merely reminds you to weigh the consequences of your actions, and it's up to you to establish your rank-order of the consequences.

3. ^{^}

   As Justis Mills pointed out, you could expect the evil woman-tripper to rack up more negative consequences than the snoozer in the long term. 

   Let's say the tripper is so prolific, that 9 times out of 10 a woman trips it's done by someone on purpose. If that's true, then consequences become a more reliable moral heuristic; your prior will only incriminate an innocent 10% of the time. The more malevolence there is, the better a proxy "consequences" will be for moral judgment.

   But it's only a proxy. Ultimately, it's not the consequences that are the marker of a bad person, it's the intention to trip women.

4. ^{^}

   So consequentialism is future-facing and not past-facing. See Zvi's Asymetric Justice [LW · GW] to see how bad past-facing consequentialism looks like.

5. ^{^}

   There's a lot of this spirit in replacing guilt.

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